


Prom Night, 1986

by glorious_spoon



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Banter, Dancing, Established Relationship, Fluff, Multi, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:45:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13590324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: “You know what, I take it back. I’m not sure I want to go to prom with either of you.”“Hey, no,” Steve said. “You made me put pants on, I’m invested now. We’re doing this.”





	Prom Night, 1986

“You can’t actually take both of us to prom, you know,” Steve said.

“Watch me,” Nancy retorted grimly, without looking up. She was bent over a stack of AP textbooks, about half a notebook’s worth of crumpled papers, and an immaculately color-coded binder of meticulous notes. There was a smear of blue ink on her nose from where her third Bic had given up the ghost half an hour ago. It was completely adorable, but he had a feeling that she might actually bite him if he said so. He exchanged a long-suffering look with Jonathan instead.

“I’m serious, Nance. I mean, I don’t even go to school here anymore—”

“Dates don’t have to be students here,” she said. “I checked the rules. As long as you’re under twenty-one, it’s fine.”

Of course she had. “Okay, but I’m still pretty sure you’re only allowed one of them.”

“I don’t mind,” Jonathan said hopefully. “You can take Steve. I’ll stay home…”

“...listen to the Clash, read nerd books…”

“...finish my scholarship applications, you mean,” Jonathan said. “Seriously, Nancy, I really don’t need to go to prom. Take Steve.”

Nancy set her pen down and looked up, giving them each a stern look in turn. “I’m not taking just one of you to prom,” she said, calm but very firm. “Either we’re all going, or none of us are.”

“You already bought your dress,” Steve pointed out. It was a pretty sexy dress, too, all green satin ruffles and plunging neckline. He was going to be completely bummed if he didn’t get to see her in it. “Look, just go with Jonathan. I’ll meet you guys afterward.” He waggled his eyebrows salaciously. “We can have a private afterparty.”

Nancy smacked his arm, but she was laughing, so it was still basically a win. She needed to laugh. She’d been stressed as hell for the past month, which just went to show that maintaining a perfect GPA was bad for a person’s health. That’s why she had Steve around. Jonathan was no help; he was almost as bad as she was. Nerds. Cute nerds, though. “You’re disgusting.”

“But in, like, a totally adorable way, right?”

“The jury’s still out.”

“That means ‘no’,” Jonathan told him, _sotto voce._ He was laughing, too, though.

“Okay, but seriously,” Steve said. “If we don’t do prom, you’re still going to wear the dress, right?”

“I’ll wear the dress,” Nancy said. “But we are _going_ to do prom. I’m not missing my senior prom.”

“I missed my senior prom,” Steve pointed out. He actually had been a little bit bummed about that, since he’d been planning on taking Nancy and doing that whole… end of school, dumb senior thing. But it had taken the three of them a while to get everything figured out, and by then the school year was over and Steve, having received an ultimatum from his dad that basically amounted to ‘get a job or get lost’, had found himself a shitty little apartment on the second story of a crumbling Victorian house in what passed for Hawkins’ main drag, and there hadn’t been any money for tuxes or tickets or any of that bullshit, and anyway last year everything between them was too fragile and new to even think about poking at like this.

“I really, seriously do not mind missing my senior prom,” Jonathan added.

“Well, I do,” Nancy said, pulling a thick annotated copy of _Ulysses_ toward her. “We’re going. Now be quiet or go away. I have an essay to finish.”

* * *

The thing was, Steve was out of high school now; Steve had an apartment and groceries and bills and a really shitty job waiting tables at Benny’s (working for one of his dad’s dealerships would have paid better, but would also come with the inescapable fact of _working for his dad_ ), and by the time May rolled around he had honestly just sort of… forgotten about the whole thing.

Okay, _honestly_ , he expected that Nancy would cave and take Jonathan, and one or both of them would show up at his place looking vaguely apologetic about it. But that didn’t happen; Nancy and Jonathan kept coming over to study at his tiny kitchen table and poke fun at his record collection and fuck on his futon mattress on the floor with the street lights coming in through the tacked-up sheets over the windows before they both kissed him and went home and left him to sleep alone in sheets that still smelled like them. Nobody said anything else about prom.

At least, not until the first week of May, when Nancy showed up alone around three in the afternoon, without even her backpack full of textbooks, and said, “Let’s go, you need to get a tux.”

Steve, who had answered the door in his boxer shorts, a half-eaten cup of ramen still clutched in one hand, blinked at her. “Um. What?”

“Get dressed, let’s go,” Nancy said, slipping past him into the apartment and pulling the door shut as she went. “Jonathan is waiting in the car.”

“Did you kidnap him, too?”

She smacked his shoulder, then stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “I’m not _kidnapping_ you, Steve. Go put some pants on.”

“It kind of feels like a kidnapping,” Steve said, setting the Styrofoam container down on the cluttered kitchen table, next to three half-empty coffee mugs and a paper cup full of shotgun shells. “Did you blackmail the Prom Committee? Am I going to get jumped by angry cheerleaders in the parking lot? Should I bring the nail bat?”

Mostly, he was worried about the cheerleaders’ boyfriends. Hawkins was still Hawkins, and he could only guess at the kind of rumors that were still swirling around the three of them, rumors that definitely were not going to die down if they all showed up to prom _together._

That wasn’t really his problem, assuming he didn’t actually get jumped in the parking lot, which wasn’t that likely now that Billy Hargrove had fucked off to the Marines or jail or where the hell ever. But it was Nancy and Jonathan’s problem, at least until graduation.

“I didn’t blackmail anybody,” Nancy said, giving him a gentle shove in the direction of his closet-sized bedroom. “Go get dressed.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve said, surrendering to the inevitable, and went.

At least when he got out to the car, Jonathan was wearing a similar baffled expression.

“She totally kidnapped you too, didn’t she?” Steve asked, sliding into the passenger seat. Nancy, being the shortest of the three of them by a lot, took the backseat.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, grinning at him across the center console, a wry, crooked grin that made Steve want to do something stupid like lean over and kiss him right here on Main Street in broad daylight. He settled for reaching across to squeeze Jonathan’s thigh, and smiled like an idiot when Jonathan tangled their fingers together. Shit. He was so gone for these two nerds, it was ridiculous. “She let you get dressed first, though.”

“I let you get dressed too,” Nancy protested, leaning forward to rest her elbows against their seats. Her loose hair tickled Steve’s nose, and he could smell her new perfume, some light, floral, feminine scent.

“Barely,” Jonathan said, twisting back in his seat to smile at her. “And under duress.”

“You know what, I take it back. I’m not sure I want to go to prom with either of you.”

“Hey, no,” Steve said. “You made me put pants on, I’m invested now. We’re doing this.”

“Fine,” Nancy said archly, and she was laughing at him, he could tell that she was laughing at him without even turning to look. “Jonathan, drive.”

Laughing, Jonathan obeyed. 

* * *

 

If Nancy had blackmailed the prom committee, there was no sign of that in the face of the smiling rhinestone-draped blonde who took their tickets and waved them into the reception room of the Holiday Inn a week later. Glitter-encrusted signs decorated the walls, and the speakers were blasting out ‘Footloose’ to a crush of seniors and underclassmen. Nancy wound through the crowd with confident grace, Steve and Jonathan trailing in her wake, until she finally found a mostly-deserted table in the corner. They settled down in front of a sea of glittering mirrored centerpieces, featuring flickering tea lights and fake flowers.

There was a long, awkward silence, broken only by the thudding, badly-tuned bass and the chattering crowd from the other side of the room. The only other two people at the table were a pair of juniors that Steve didn’t recognize, who were too busy sucking face to even notice that anyone else had sat down. Jonathan was twisting his hands together in his lap like he didn’t know what to do with them; the confidence in Nancy’s expression was flickering as she scanned the room.

The music flipped over to Phil Collins, and the crowd on the dance floor started dissipating, leaving only couples swaying slowly in the blue lights, the disco ball overhead reflecting glittering shapes onto sequined dresses and plastic punch cups.

Steve rubbed his hands on his thighs, and then said, brightly, “So, does anybody want to dance?”

Jonathan laughed and dropped his head, something in him relaxing visibly. “Nancy can dance with you. _I’m_ not going to.”

Steve looked at her. “Nance?”

“Oh, all right,” she said, smiling. She leaned over to kiss Jonathan on the lips, taking her time about it, and when she broke off the kiss and stood, there were spots of color high in his cheeks. It made Steve wish he could kiss him, too, right here in the middle of the banquet hall with half of Hawkins High watching. Instead, he held out a hand to Nancy and led her out onto the dance floor.

It wasn’t the first time they’d danced together. There had been Homecoming, that first disastrous year they were dating, and a couple of house parties besides. There was nothing _new_ about this, about the warm slender shape of Nancy in his arms, the scent of her hair and the shy curl of her smile as she looked up at him, his hands at her waist, her skin warm through her satin dress, shuffling slowly together on the parquet tile floor.

Okay, nothing new except for Jonathan watching them from a round, chiffon-draped table in the corner, his narrow dark eyes intent, focused in a way that put a spike of heat through Steve’s belly.

“So,” he murmured into Nancy’s ear. “How long until we can get out of here?”

She was looking up at him with the pursed smile that meant she was really trying her best to keep a straight face, unsuccessfully. “We just got here.”

“Hey, I’m just asking.”

They made another slow, shuffling turn, and then Nancy glanced over at Jonathan and said, “We can leave as soon as Jonathan dances. But not until then.”

“Aw, shit,” Steve says, not entirely joking, “we’re going to be living in the ballroom of the Holiday Inn, then.”

“Funny.”

“No, I’m totally serious, we can set up cots, raid the continental breakfast for stale bagels every morning—”

“You’re not nearly as cute as you think you are,” Nancy said, but she was smiling up at him, her eyes sparkling.

Steve grinned back. “Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“ _Jonathan_ thinks I’m cute.” Steve winked ostentatiously at Jonathan as they moved past the table again, and got a sharply amused smile in return. A few more people had gathered at the table, the slow song driving everybody but couples off of the dance floor, but Jonathan still sat in a pool of empty space, the Chinese lantern overhead bathing him in an ethereal blue light.

Nancy directed a smile his way, and then at Steve, looking amused. “Jonathan has terrible taste.”

“He’s dating both of us. He has great taste. And I’ll get him to dance, if only so you can gloat about proving me wrong.”

“Well,” Nancy says, laughing. “Whatever motivates you.”

“Yeah, well. I’m a generous kind of guy.”

* * *

All in all, it took eight songs and the better part of an hour to drag Jonathan out onto the dance floor. They finally managed it during a Springsteen ballad— apparently tolerable to Jonathan’s elevated musical tastes, and not fast enough to require much of anything in the way of dance moves. Which was fortunate, because Jonathan had all the graceful coordination of an adolescent stork.

God, he was adorable.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” he complained, swaying halfheartedly while the Boss crooned about packing his bags and heading south and the disco lights spun slowly around them. The dance floor wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t that crowded either. Someone had spiked the punch, and the majority of the crowd had migrated over in that direction to watch Ms. Rashaad berate the tuxedo-wearing culprits. Nobody was paying them much attention at all, so Steve slipped one arm around Jonathan’s waist and the other around Nancy’s and swayed with them, hips bumping, the warm shapes of their bodies against him and the smell of Nancy’s shampoo and Jonathan’s cologne in his nose.

It was as much as they could do and still maintain any kind of plausible deniability, but he didn’t let himself dwell on that. Nancy rested her head on his chest, and Jonathan’s arm slid around his back, holding him close. Steve was pretty sure that if anybody got a look at the sappy, besotted look on his face right then, the cat would have been out of the bag.

“Admit it,” he said, smiling into Jonathan’s hair. “You’re having fun.”

“No, I’m not,” Jonathan said, but he was smiling too, tucking his chin in like that would hide it. Steve was hit with a sudden rush of fondness for him, for both of them.

How the hell he’d managed to get this lucky, he’d never know.

“Well, you’re in luck. Nance said we could leave as soon as you got up and danced. You held up your end of the bargain, so…” he trailed off significantly.

“Oh, fine,” Nancy said, sounding amused. She didn’t lift her head or let go of Steve. “We can go, if you really want to.”

“We don’t have to,” Jonathan said. When they both looked at him in surprise, he ducked his head and added, “I mean, we already paid for the tickets. Might as well stay a little longer, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve said after a moment, pulling both of them closer and resting his cheek on Nancy’s head. On the other side of the room Ms. Rashaad was frog-marching a couple of snickering guys out of the ballroom, their dates trailing behind wearing smeared mascara and stricken expressions. The spiked punch bowl, momentarily unguarded, was immediately converged upon. “Makes sense. Get our money’s worth. Nancy?”

“Might as well,” she agreed, smiling. She tilted her head up to brush her lips against his, then leaned over to kiss Jonathan as well. Out of habit, Steve glanced quickly around the room, but nobody was paying them any attention.

The song flipped over to something slow and sweet, and the three of them stayed there swaying together under the softly winking lights.


End file.
